Tag Archives: pigeons

Xu Jun wakes up every morning at 4 a.m. and drives hundreds of miles away from his Bayside apartment with at least 70 pigeons, then lets them find their way home. He’s training his birds, known as homing pigeons, for a competition in September.

“When I was young I liked to have pigeons,” Jun said in Mandarin, speaking through translator Lisa Zhang. “It’s always been an interest of mine.”

Jun participates in various races across the northeast and he began the hobby three years ago. The World Center Memorial Race, the one Jun is currently preparing for, is hosted by the Bronx Homing Pigeon Club and takes place in late September. Each of Jun’s 101 pigeons has an individual number tag so that the race organizers can make sure nobody cheats. The organizers of the race will take Jun’s birds, along with hundreds of other contestants’ birds, to an undisclosed area where they are released. Contestants are judged based on how fast their flock comes home, according to Jun.

Jun’s birds live in a wooden nest, known as a loft, in a College Point bus repair shop. The loft serves as their home and final destination in races. Jun works for the shop and during the lulls in his work schedule he cleans the loft and feeds the birds.

Homing pigeons have two racing seasons. The first is in late September when the birds are less than a year old. The second season is in the spring and the birds are typically older by this point in their racing careers.

With the first race season approaching, Jun has been training his pigeons by taking them further and further out in New Jersey every week and then releasing them in the wild, where they will usually take several hours to fly back home.

“I just like pigeons. It’s a very simple thing for me and I enjoy it,” Jun said. That day he was particularly pleased with his birds’ athletic performance; he released 73 and all of them returned, an outcome that doesn’t always happen.

“There’s kind of a neat tradition to pigeon homing,” said Deone Roberts, who works for the American Racing Pigeon Union, an organization that’s affiliated with hundreds of pigeon clubs across the country.

“The bird’s simply enjoying flying and going home,” she said. “[The pigeon] wants to go home and be with his mate and their offspring. It makes good fun.”

Using pigeons for racing has been around in America since the late 1800s, according to Roberts’ organization. The birds, a common sight in New York City, were also used during WWII to transmit messages across enemy lines.

A slippery suspect whose DNA was matched to three sex attacks mocked the Bronx DA for missteps that got his charges dismissed, joyfully taunting during a jailhouse interview “How’d they blow it? How’d they blow it?”

Brian Brockington, 34, insisted he never raped anyone — though he claims that a full calendar year is a blackout for him.

Two transit offers were on the right train at the right time on Saturday and ended up catching an alleged pickpocket in action.

Police say the officers were patrolling a Queens-bound E train early Saturday morning inManhattan, when 50-year old Manuel Alduey got on an adjoining car at West 4th Street and sat next to a sleeping passenger.

More human bones found on Long Island where series of skeletal remains were discovered

Another human skeleton has turned up in a wooded area on the eastern end of Long Island, in a town where at least four other sets of human remains have been discovered in recent years.

The latest set of bones was discovered at around 6:30 p.m. Friday in a pine barrens in Manorville. A resident of the town, Matt Samuel, said he was walking through the area with his dog when he made the find.

The family of aQueens grandmother who died of a heart attack during the December 2010 blizzard is suing the city for failing to clear the streets, which they say delayed emergency responders. Faith Radvin and Robin Martucci claim in a suit filed yesterday that a day after the storm, their mother, Gail Radvin, 73, had a fatal heart attack.

After two years and $2.3 million, Queens park still awaits public toilet

A costly restroom facility in Elmhurst contracted by the city nearly two years ago is still under construction, and it could end up costing even more than originally indicated.

The comfort station at Elmhurst Park— the former site of the Elmhurst Gas Tanks — was originally quoted at just under $2 million in July 2010. The city has since raised the price tag to nearly $2.3 million. And parkgoers continue a scramble to find places to relieve themselves nine months after the park opened.

Pearlperry Reich, 30, a stunning mother of four, said she’s done with the Hasidic community after it fought tooth-and-nail against her repeated attempts to end her rocky marriage — despite her claims of emotional and physical abuse. “It was an arranged marriage,” she said of her betrothal at the tender age of 18. “We got married and right away we had issues.”